The card metaphor is a timeless medium for exchange of ideas. A card, particularly a physical card, has a limited amount of visual real estate available to convey information. The text must be readable and the graphics must be cognizable, that is, understandable at some common level. These constraints provide challenges when used as a medium to convey information.
Technology convergence has spawned some convenient offspring that become de facto standards. The credit card and the business card have merged to the dominant format. The longer but narrower business card suffered physical degradation when mashed in a wallet with the shorter but wider credit card. Frayed corners became rounded. The elongated rounded corner business card adopted by some in response was a stopgap measure. The dominant format of the sturdy plastic credit card won that format duel. Business cards are migrating to thin plastic wallet cards, sized to the credit card. The standard “wallet card” is common not only to credit and debit cards, but plastic and paper transportation cards, gift cards, phone cards and coupon cards.
On a parallel front, the current optimum screen for handheld communication devices, particularly those with internet capabilities, has first temporarily settled on a card-size screen with 480 pixel by 320 pixel granularity. The size and granularity of this screen allows for media presentations acceptable to modern content providers, including motion pictures and interactive games. The popularity of the Apple iPhone has established the card-size 480 pixel by 320 pixel screen as a format standard. The 3×2 ratio of the screen, however, has never really been a favored configuration for cards, including playing cards, trading cards, business cards, or ordinary index cards. Nevertheless, the metaphor of the card aptly applies to the exchangeability of the content capacity of the handheld electronic screen and the physical printed card.
On the other hand, subsequent multi-media communication devices emulating the iPhone have higher resolution screens. For example, the Android Nexus has a screen with an 800 pixel×480 pixel resolution providing a familiar 3×5 aspect ratio. The leaner resulting content image when converted to the ISO card format does not provide an extra area for a header or trailer, but rather an increased side margin that permits a side bar of about 22 pixels running the entire 800 pixel length of the content field.
The preferred method of converting the screen image to a card image with a visible or hidden header, trailer or side bar, is by an application or applet in the handheld device that is programmed to accomplish the conversion, allow the additional coding or data to be input into the extra field, and direct the printing of the card to a conventional paper printer. The preferred combination is a dedicated card printer that communicates with the handheld through a Bluetooth wireless communication channel since most modern handheld devices now have this capability.